Aka stuff for the wife so I can justify spending the money on the parts and taking up space lol…
Any photos or DXFs or STLs or whatever would be super helpful to a noob
I used my MPCNC to resurface a wore out cutting board. Nothing from scratch, though.
For resurfacing do you run a big end mill or is there a specific facing bit you guys use?
I’ve got 3/4" and 1" facing bits that I use, depending on the size of area to be faced.
I build cutting boards in the shop and then carve into the underside of them with whatever folks want. Works very well.
I use Inkscape to create the DXF and then ESTLCAM to create the gcode. It works very well…
If you have any questions, let me know.
Tom
Wine bottle rack for an ikea shelf.
Pictures are in my mpcnc album if the image isn’t showing for you guys.
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Side question. Im pretty new here lol…
ESTLCAM cant make anything from scratch I take it? Im used to Mastercam where its a all in one shot. And what is difference between a DXF and SVG? I know I can google it but id love to hear your take.
No scratch but worn out? How that?
SCNR. 
Estlcam can add text, but thats about it.
Dxf is used in a lot of cad programs. Svg is more for art, but that line is pretty blurry. Something like inkscape or illustrator can output svgs. Dxf is commonly output from onshape, autocad, librecad, etc.
I got ya lol
So pretty much you don’t being with ESTLCAM you simply use it to trace out SVGs or DXFs with toolpaths?
Right. It’s Computer Aided Machining, not Computer Aided Design.
In addition to tracing, you select the tollpath options like feeds and speeds, depth of cuts, etc.
Durr good point…im shot today.
I tried to do something last night on ESTLCAM with a SVG I had made the feed rates were alllll types of wrong and slow. Still pretty terrified to run anything even with the pen lol.
If you’re worried about running the machine, get some 1" thick structural foam. Run your spindle through it. It cuts like butter and you can run any speed you want without worrying about damaging the machine.
[attachment file=118581]
[attachment file=118582]
So I got over my fear and sent it. Im running low for scrap wood and test pieces but the wife requested a “fancy” sign foar the kitchen. She has a crass sense of humor like myself.
Estlcam’s text system is kinda aggravating but I eventually got it work. I would put in text into the box make changes to font/size and it would never take, after doing it 2 or 3 more times it finally worked. Occasionally it would crash while rendering different fonts, Im running a somewhat slower laptop too which might not be helping.
The flowers came from a jpeg dumped into inkscape turned into a SVG. Svg went into estlcam and I set engraving to be on the line. Using a 45 vbit with a depth of roughly 1mm this is what I got. If I go much deeper the drawings and text become unreadable. I think my toolpaths need work and possibly a different angled v bit.
Im lost with the text toolpath cutting options too on estlcam lol. I forgot which one I chose maybe one day ill do a test with each settings.
Wood was rattle canned with some bbq flat black I had laying around but it soaked into the wood. Sanded with 220 but the sandpaper was beat so I couldnt keep going down to hit clean wood.
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Looks great!
You could always make the text in inkscape and then just treat it like another engraving path. But that can have it’s own headaches. Like selecting all the little paths and uf you’re not using a v bit, it’s hard to tell from inkscape what won’t be cut because the bit won’t fit.
Ive tried that but the text never makes it into estcam when I import it as a SVG from inkscape.
[attachment file=“inkscape test.png”]
[attachment file=“estl cam test.png”]
You need to select the text boxes and then Path, Object to Path. In most cases, this will give you the outline of the characters.
That did the trick and they showed up in ESTCAM (I saved it as a DXF from Inkscape not sure if thats better than a SVG file??)
Next question…
Should I be using the carve options 99% of the time when using a v bit??
Yup, in my opinion.
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